To make guns safer, heed the lessons we took from automobiles | Editorial

Long before there was a debate on the effect of guns on public safety, there was a seven-term congressman named Robert Cousins, an erudite Iowan who bewailed the health hazard of a new technology around the turn of the 20th century called the automobile.

"Horrible and gruesome incidents are of almost daily occurrence," he said, noting how the driver recklessness has "bespattered boulevards with blood" and is "crippling and killing people at a rate that is appalling."

That was not hyperbole. The New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, once calculated that if we still had the same auto fatality rate that we had around 1921, there would be 715,000 Americans killed in vehicular accidents every year.

Nobody ever suggested we ban cars. We responded rationally, and in spite of our intense love of automobiles, we applied rules and technologies we now take for granted - safety inspections, traffic regulations, seatbelts, airbags, license restrictions for teens, DWI laws, banning distractions such as texting, and more.

All this happened because lawmakers recognized automotive deaths as a public health crisis.

Result: Using that 1921 math, we have reduced the auto fatality rate by 95 percent.

Pause here to salute American ingenuity.

In the aftermath of yet another mass slaughter by a man with an assault rifle in Texas, we wonder why Congress cannot muster the ingenuity to apply similar safety measures toward guns - which we don't love nearly as much as our cars.

The short answer, of course, is that lawmakers are either emasculated by a powerful gun lobby or seem to believe that thoughts and prayers can stop bullets.

But we can dial back the carnage, if we begin by acknowledging a problem (having our three worst mass shootings in the last 17 months is a problem) followed by small but significant measures that would threaten no law-abiding citizen's right to own a firearm.

There have been 21 mass killings (at least four dead in one incident) and 305 mass shootings (four or more struck by a bullet) this year. And we know that these cases have a common denominator: In more than half of the 156 mass shootings between 2009 and 2016, it was related to domestic violence, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.

It also found that more than one-third of the cases - 34 percent - involved a shooter who was prohibited from possessing firearms.

This is not complicated: Men guilty of domestic violence need to be separated from firearms. The man who killed 26 people in a Texas church last week was such a case. He had a history of mental illness should have been prevented from having his assault rifle, but the Air Force failed to enter his name into the federal database used for instant background checks.

Or consider the impact of closing the so-called gun show loophole: In the 14 states that have checks for unlicensed sales, women are 46 percent less likely to be shot to death by a partner; cops are 48 percent less likely to be killed with a handgun. Even 93 percent of gun owners support background checks, while 88 percent favor a ban on gun sales to people with violent histories.

The rest - magazine limits, ending immunity for manufacturers, bump stock bans, etc. -can come later, after the firearm fetishists who run the NRA realize that little has changed, other than the body count.

We cannot control the mental health or violent impulses of people. We cannot control how they feel about race, religion, or even mothers-in-law. But the Sutherland Springs massacre reminds us that we can make it harder for people with violent pasts to obtain firearms, much less an assault rifle.

We don't need another debate on the right to own guns; that's settled. What's needed is a dispassionate dialogue about specific policies that can protect public health and save lives. Those policies are readily apparent, just as they were with automobiles. We just need the political courage to enact them.